‘I’ve learned that the hard way’: Love Island star shares photos from three nose surgeries and the warning she wishes she’d had

Kim Hartnett, a content creator known for her appearance on Love Island Australia, has gone public with a detailed account of the complications she faced after three separate rhinoplasty procedures. The 30-year-old posted photos on Instagram on March 28 documenting each stage of her surgeries, calling the experience “one of the hardest journeys of my life over the next three years.” As detailed by LADbible, she described the post as a direct response to the weekly DMs she receives from people asking about her nose.

Hartnett said she wanted to share her story in the hope it helps someone think twice and make an informed decision before going under the knife. Her first surgeon, who she described as well-known across social media, left her in what she called a devastating condition. One nostril pulled upward and the other collapsed, leaving her struggling to breathe.

After what she described as a long and exhausting fight, the original surgeon agreed to offer her less than a quarter of a refund, on the condition she sign a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting her from speaking negatively about him. She ultimately agreed, though she has since spoken out, with the NDA no longer appearing to constrain her account.

Infection undid everything from the second surgery

Hoping to correct the damage, Hartnett underwent a second procedure intended as a revision surgery. The six-hour operation revealed extensive internal damage caused by the initial rhinoplasty, and her nose had effectively become, in her words, “a mass of scar tissue.” Two weeks post-surgery, she contracted an infection that caused extreme redness and swelling. She was put on antibiotics, but said it was already too late, and the infection had essentially undone everything from the surgery.

Because her cartilage graft was eaten away, she developed dents and her nose was pulled in different directions, ultimately leading to a collapse. The complications align with what medical literature has documented about revision rhinoplasty, which frequently involves patients dealing with residual septal deviations, nasal vestibular stenosis, and unpredictable healing across bone, cartilage, mucosa, and surrounding tissue. The aesthetic result of any rhinoplasty can look markedly different one year after surgery than it did immediately post-operation, a factor Hartnett said she was not adequately warned about.

Amid broader conversations about cosmetic procedures and their real-world outcomes, an experiment involving identical twins and facial fillers drew similar attention to the gap between social media expectations and actual results. Hartnett’s case takes that gap further, into territory where the consequences were functional as well as cosmetic.

On her third attempt, Hartnett found a different outcome. She publicly credited Dr. Abdulkadir Goksel, a specialist in complex revision cases based in Turkey, with rebuilding her nose entirely. She said she went into the surgery with realistic expectations, not chasing perfection, but wanting something stable, functional, and natural. She said he exceeded all of those expectations and that, for the first time in years, she feels the chapter is behind her. The pressure on influencers to maintain a curated appearance has been documented across social media platforms, with a beauty influencer losing 140K followers after a filter glitch revealed her unedited appearance during a livestream, underscoring the image standards that drive many toward elective procedures in the first place.

Hartnett’s account is the latest from a public figure warning that the risks of rhinoplasty are real, that social media surgeons do not always deliver safe results, and that the path to corrective outcomes can span years.